Many medical procedures require tests to be performed with a sample of a patient's fluid. The ability to rapidly and accurately detect a wide range of analytes present in a bodily fluid is often critical for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of diseases.
Traditionally, detecting a range of analytes present in a bodily fluid such as blood has been performed in laboratories by trained technicians. Performing such assays is usually time-consuming and costly. The desire for rapid turnaround time creates a need to facilitate testing that can be delivered at the point-of-care. Point-of-care testing is particularly desirable because it rapidly delivers results to medical practitioners, enables faster consultation, and avoids unattended deterioration of a patient's condition.
Although several point of care testing devices are available, the majority of which is adapted to detect a single analyte, or one type of analytes for a single indication. Examples of such point of care devices are tests for glucose, drugs of abuse, serum cholesterol, pregnancy, or ovulation.
Thus, there remains a need for alternative designs of point of care systems that are capable of detecting a range of analytes from bodily fluid. A desirable system would allow quantitative and qualitative measurements of analytes in a more cost effective and timely fashion. The present invention addresses this need and provides related advantages as well.